From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.science.mathematics.categories/4905 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: mjhealy@ece.unm.edu Newsgroups: gmane.science.mathematics.categories Subject: Re: patenting colimits? Date: Wed, 27 May 2009 10:18:27 -0600 (MDT) Message-ID: Reply-To: mjhealy@ece.unm.edu NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Content-Type: text/plain;charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1243483568 20831 80.91.229.12 (28 May 2009 04:06:08 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 28 May 2009 04:06:08 +0000 (UTC) To: "Michael Barr" , categories@mta.ca Original-X-From: categories@mta.ca Thu May 28 06:06:06 2009 Return-path: Envelope-to: gsmc-categories@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from mailserv.mta.ca ([138.73.1.1]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.50) id 1M9WsX-0007xq-Qs for gsmc-categories@m.gmane.org; Thu, 28 May 2009 06:06:05 +0200 Original-Received: from Majordom by mailserv.mta.ca with local (Exim 4.61) (envelope-from ) id 1M9WGz-0000tB-QS for categories-list@mta.ca; Thu, 28 May 2009 00:27:17 -0300 Original-Sender: categories@mta.ca Precedence: bulk Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.science.mathematics.categories:4905 Archived-At: Dear Michael and all, I am unaware of a great deal of the history of category theory in grant funding. The NSF declaration is troubling, especially since my colleague= s and I so far have had our category-theoretic proposals in cognitive neuroscience rejected. Some of the reviewers, though, did seem to find favor with our use of category theory in relation to their subject; the problem seems to have been more in other areas. We haven't given up! I regret not joining the FMCS crowd at UBC. Too much work has resulted from a prior commitment. Best regards, Mike > Interesting comments by Vaughan. I have not looked at this patent and > have no intention of doing so. But Charles and I, both in CTCS and in = a > paper published in some CS conference proceedings exhibited things like > a sketch for trees of integers as a pushout or amalgamated sum of a ske= tch > for trees and that for integers by identifying the sort for integers in > the latter with the sort for leaves in the fomer. I think we have a > triple amalgamation too, something like trees of lists of integers. So > evidence of prior art certainly exists, if anyone cares. > > On the other hand, I for one would welcome serious applications of > category theory in industry. My former department is hiring in only th= ree > areas: number theory (in which they are truly strong), applied math, an= d > statistics (in each of which I rather suspect they are truly weak since > they are competing with every g-d university in North America). I woul= d > just love to shove it in their collective faces that by allowing the > category theory group to wither, they have allowed an important applied > area to disappear. But no, they would rather be in the rearguard than = the > advanced guard. > > Wouldn't it be nice to make the same point to NSF which announced > officially in 1993 that there would never again be any funding in categ= ory > theory? > > Michael > > > [For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ] > [For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]